Call Centers - urggggggggggggggh

19 Oct 2004

A fair few people visit the Cafe each Day , so there's a fair chance some of you work in a Call Centre somewhere .
It was my day off today , and a chance to catch up with various domestic 'jobs' . 3 of these involved telephoning and chasing claims we have outstanding . 1. a cancelled holiday 2. a motor claim 3. a leaking pipe . I gave up . a total of just over 3 hours in telephone queues . Can someone please explain what the mentality of these places are ?
'your answer maybe be monitored for training purposes'
mad

:x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x

19 Oct 2004

at my answer being monitored!
stu, t'is a sad fact of life, that often in these places the outbound sales dept massively outnumbers the inbound customer enquiries. you'll no doubt have one of those interminable press 1 for blah de blah, press 2 for tum te tum, and the number you want to get through to was the last option on the third menu.
unless it's a chance of new business for the company, you're just gonna wait, till the poor buggers fielding all the complaints have managed to calm down each and every irate caller, and hope to god they can come up with a solution, or alternatively fob you off sharpish, cos the call board is flashing that they have 3 million people waiting, and they're several 1000 % below target, and their team leader is screaming at them, desperately trying to look good to their boss and hopefully get the hell out of there with a promotion!
neil x x x ;)

19 Oct 2004

Yeah know where you're coming from. At the end of the day, the person taking the call is the same as you and I - it's not their fault that there company has not resourced correctly and perhaps doesn't treat them like an adult.
With call centres, Mon & Tues are normally their busy days so try and avoid them and also try to call after 2 pm or even after 4 when traditionally the call volumes normally drop.
Have a nice day...!

19 Oct 2004

What is it with the automated messages and the fact they assume you have a star button!!!! Having spent silly bollocks money on expensive phones which soon either broke down or got broken, so i now have an unglamourous phone, it looks pig ugly but as it was designed for high volume usage it is very sturdy, but call centres, it has no * button.
And where the f**k is the option of, "to speak to a human press......."
Can you guess i spent yesterday trying to catch up with my paperwork / bills too??

19 Oct 2004

Points noted chaps , tried the 2 - 4 one (mums out on school runs) but no f***ing good.
'Your Call Really Matters To Us' ........... well if it matters that much , pick the bloody phone up.

19 Oct 2004

Quote by stupot
Points noted chaps , tried the 2 - 4 one (mums out on school runs) but no f***ing good.
'Your Call Really Matters To Us' ........... well if it matters that much , pick the bloody phone up.

well if you all call at the same time.. what they suppose to do.... biggrin

:D :D
if there is a long queue for the bank for example.. would you rather recieve good service and try to help... or would you like to be rushed like a herd of cattle????
and i am betting if the latter happened... you'd be the first one the complain....
granted we are going to get a call counter telling people how many are in front of them.. but i am in such a specialist deptartment that we are going to have to take our time with people.....
so just avoid busy times..... half-time of big football games... after soap opera's.....first thing monday morning (especially if the damn thing is open 7 days a week) ect!!!!!
sean xxxxx

19 Oct 2004

Well I sort of work in a call centre. I do tech support for a range of products. When we leave our desks we forward our phones to a colleague.
We have now found that if this colleague then forwards their phone to you. The call has nowhere to go, and just rings number un-obtainable.
You just can't begin to imagine how much work we are getting done now the phone doesn't ring all day.
Ian

19 Oct 2004

As I have said before in some other post, we get to many calls a day for O2.
It has been happening for quite a few months now. We foud out that O2 has thier number written incorrectly on thier company paper.
We tell people that they have dialled the wrong number, what happens? They dial again and again, we tell them a second and third time they are wrong. So we play with them a little to get even, we pass them around the office on the premiss of going to another department. We leave them on hold till they hang up. We also get a fair few calls for Busters motorcycles But they are ok because we are bikers as well (got to have some standards).
So if any of you are on O2 and you phone for any queries BEWARE It could be me you are talking to. mad

:x :x :x

19 Oct 2004

The job of call centres seems to be to fob you off and get you to hang up as quickly as possible, without doing anything to actually help you with what you want to do. This isn't to denigrate call-centre operators in any way, as I'm sure there are some particularly fine people working in call-centres, but the system in general just doesn't work.
Their favourite tactic is to say they'll phone you back. Has anyone ever been phoned back by a call centre? You always just sit waiting, then have to phone them, and of course you get through to someone different and have to go to the trouble of explaining your case all over again... mad

That's if you can get through at all. The Inland Revenue are fining me for late submission of some form or other. If I don't want to be fined, I have to ring up their fines department to plead my case. For three weeks I've been trying that number and every bloody time it's engaged. And there's no queue - it's just engaged. Any other number I ring at the Inland Revenue is answered very promptly, but none of them can help me - they just give me the number of the fines department. Which is permanently engaged.